King of Fighters 94: Team Edit hack

[SieKensou]

woohoo! it did!

I added in copying the order select background tilemap on top of the team select tilemap. In other words, the game no longer renders the flags frame, it just renders a clean background.

"the part you added of the background to hide were the flags was"

so this part no longer exists thanks to this change.

This also means I can now properly scale down the character grid once the team has been chosen, just like in KOF95. So the hack can now do this

Woooow! Yeah, that is what I had in mind when I tell you about the order select bg, good to see it works well and good to know that now we can have that cool sacale down character grid effect. It will be a very nice touch.

 

[SieKensou]

Didn't you noticed this post?

Following your instructions, then you should be able to move the character names 8 pixels down and then the character grid a bit more, right? It would look like this:
View attachment 73557

I think it looks much better like this, specially now that the cursor is extended and the border is just over the character names. And now that I see it again, maybe you can put it a pixel up from what you see in this mockup and it will be perfect.

Tested v4.1, CPU cursor is out of place a few pixels, at least at the Ikari Warriors team (I think is the only one with this problem).
When you continue at the continue screen, a voice of one of the characters play, sometimes doesn't play the correct voice (I hear Heidern one time I was playing with the female team complete, other time I hear Terry with that same team).
When you reach the boss, the character select screen is not showed too much time, I think it should play during all the time as if the random cursor was moving (exactly how it does with the other teams).

 

[city41]

at least at the Ikari Warriors team (I think is the only one with this problem)

Oops, yup, had that team's y off by 1. I just pushed a fix for this to the repo but the fix won't get out until the next release.

When you continue at the continue screen, a voice of one of the characters play, sometimes doesn't play the correct voice (I hear Heidern one time I was playing with the female team complete, other time I hear Terry with that same team).

Ok, filed a bug. Thanks for finding that.

When you reach the boss, the character select screen is not showed too much time, I think it should play during all the time as if the random cursor was moving (exactly how it does with the other teams).

This is the same in the original game too, so not sure if it will be easy to make changes here.

I think it looks much better like this

I dunno, it looks kinda crowded to me. It might be worth trying to get rid of the logo and world and then make the character select screen pretty much exactly like KOF95's.


Version 0.5.1 is now out. It has fixes around win quotes and some other minor fixes and polish. But most notably it has random select

I'm really happy with how it turned out. And hoo this was a pretty big feature. Especially in assembly

 

[SieKensou]

This is the same in the original game too, so not sure if it will be easy to make changes here.

Oh, I didn't remember that. It seems that I pay more attention to that details when testing, haha. It looks weird because you don't even have too much time to see Rugal's icon, that screen dissappear too fast.

I dunno, it looks kinda crowded to me. It might be worth trying to get rid of the logo and world and then make the character select screen pretty much exactly like KOF95's.

Hmmm... Yeah, maybe you are right, it would look much better without the logo and the world globe, just the red and blue bg.

Version 0.5.1 is now out. It has fixes around win quotes and some other minor fixes and polish. But most notably it has random select

I'm really happy with how it turned out. And hoo this was a pretty big feature. Especially in assembly

Woooow, that's incredible. You did it very well and you did it too fast. I didn't expedted this feature so soon. Great job! That's a really nice addition to the game. Congratulations.
I noticed that the, the random characters are the same for the entire game. Do you plan to make them change each stage as it does in KOF98?



Tested 5.1 and now in Kawaks, when you select your characters, the most part of the character grid dissappear.



I was testing the boss with DIP switches and I noticed you can play directly with the second form of the boss, I don't know if this help to make it playable in the 2 ways (first form, even if after defeated changed to second) and another with second form directly.
When you select it, if you press left or right it changes to second form (you only will notice that Rugal's sprite stop his animation for a while, but when you start the round you will see it as second form directly).

 

[city41]

I noticed that the, the random characters are the same for the entire game. Do you plan to make them change each stage as it does in KOF98?

haha, I didn't know that. I should be able to do that. That would make random select be KOF94's truly hard mode. Random characters against that cpu? Sheesh.

Tested 5.1 and now in Kawaks, when you select your characters, the most part of the character grid dissappear.

Unfortunately Kawaks might end up being a lost cause. Fixing this will probably be incredibly hard because I don't think Kawaks has a debugger or anything like that. If that is the case fixing it would be trial and error. It still works fine on real hardware, MAME and fbneo (which is just a fork of MAME).

I was testing the boss with DIP switches and I noticed you can play directly with the second form of the boss

Oh yeah, I forgot about this. I was wrong about that. In this rom hack he has a team of three second form Rugals

 

[SieKensou]

haha, I didn't know that. I should be able to do that. That would make random select be KOF94's truly hard mode. Random characters against that cpu? Sheesh.

Haha, yeah, it's how it works in all KOF games that has that feature. Even if a second player enters, it select again a random team.

Unfortunately Kawaks might end up being a lost cause. Fixing this will probably be incredibly hard because I don't think Kawaks has a debugger or anything like that. If that is the case fixing it would be trial and error. It still works fine on real hardware, MAME and fbneo (which is just a fork of MAME).

Hmmm... Yes, I understand that. It's very difficult to know what is hapening with the right tools. It has a debugger, but not as great as MAME so I don't know if it really can help in this case. What is weird is that I have tried a lot of hacks in WinKawaks and never had any bug like this one. Well, at least is good to know that it works great in real hardware.

Oh yeah, I forgot about this. I was wrong about that. In this rom hack he has a team of three second form Rugals

Cool, maybe finally we could have both versions of Rugal.

 

[city41]

What is weird is that I have tried a lot of hacks in WinKawaks and never had any bug like this one

The character select screen steals some sprites and palettes from the main game and just manages to steal enough to pull it off. The main game hands out sprites and palettes very dynamically. It's an impressive system, but also a very hard one to crack.

I would bet my hack is hitting something in Kawaks that causes the main game's graphics system to go off the rails.

I'm really abusing the game, it has no idea I stole all that stuff from it. But if it works and works on real hardware, then I think that's totally fine. Doing it the "right" way might honestly take months and months maybe even years, we'd basically have to reverse engineer pretty much the entire game.

Even if a second player enters, it select again a random team.

I think I'm not going to do this. The hack allows each player to select a new team every time in versus mode. And I think the modern fighting community likes that (I asked on the kof94 discord and they all agreed). In versus mode each player can choose random again if they want.

 

[city41]

Ok 0.5.2 now re-randomizes for the next match in single player mode.

 

[SieKensou]

The character select screen steals some sprites and palettes from the main game and just manages to steal enough to pull it off. The main game hands out sprites and palettes very dynamically. It's an impressive system, but also a very hard one to crack.

I would bet my hack is hitting something in Kawaks that causes the main game's graphics system to go off the rails.

I'm really abusing the game, it has no idea I stole all that stuff from it. But if it works and works on real hardware, then I think that's totally fine. Doing it the "right" way might honestly take months and months maybe even years, we'd basically have to reverse engineer pretty much the entire game.

Yes, I understand it. I will test it on another emulator when I have some more free time to see what happen.

I think I'm not going to do this. The hack allows each player to select a new team every time in versus mode. And I think the modern fighting community likes that (I asked on the kof94 discord and they all agreed). In versus mode each player can choose random again if they want.

Oh, yes, I forgot your version is working like that. I just was explaining how it works in '98. It's not a bad idea to have it working like that but I always found more challenging keep the same team until you lose. That's the way it always worked KOF on the NeoGeo when you challenge the player. Other thing is the VS mode, that works selecting your characters in every battle.

Ok 0.5.2 now re-randomizes for the next match in single player mode.

Great!!! Good job!!!


Do you have in mind to remove the censorship in all regions? It shouldn't be too much complicated and it can be a nice add.

 

[city41]

Do you have in mind to remove the censorship in all regions? It shouldn't be too much complicated and it can be a nice add.

No plans right now. I just want to get version 1.0 out and then maybe I'll circle back to improvements.

 

[SieKensou]

Good news. I tested the latest version 6.0 and it seems that all character select screen related bugs in Kawaks are gone.

 

[city41]

Good news. I tested the latest version 6.0 and it seems that all character select screen related bugs in Kawaks are gone.

Woah, that's really weird. I changed the code a lot. But it should still be doing the same thing

I'll take it as a win

 

[SieKensou]

Woah, that's really weird. I changed the code a lot. But it should still be doing the same thing

I'll take it as a win

Haha, it's too weird, yeah. I wasn't expected to be completely fixed but I have tested it a lot and it works fine in TEAM and in SINGLE modes. I didn't notice any of the old bugs in the character select screen, so yes, it's a win!

 

[city41]

Even better, now having a version that is broken in Kawaks and one that works, I can compare the two if needed and hopefully root cause the Kawaks issue. But also, hopefully it doesn't come to that.

 

[city41]

When you continue at the continue screen, a voice of one of the characters play, sometimes doesn't play the correct voice (I hear Heidern one time I was playing with the female team complete, other time I hear Terry with that same team).

This is now fixed in the latest version (0.7.0). Also the character who lost the match is now in the center of the continue screen.

 

[SieKensou]

This is now fixed in the latest version (0.7.0). Also the character who lost the match is now in the center of the continue screen.

Cool. Great job. I will test the new version. Good to see you are doing all the neccessary stuff to make the hack perfect. Thanks!

 

[city41]

I just put out 0.8.0, which shows alternate colors for your chosen characters on the character select screen.



Sorry to keep spamming releases, I decided to spam this one as this was a big change and figure if anyone wants to test it, please do.

All that's left is the second cutscene and the third cutscene/ending. So hopefully my next version release is 1.0.0-beta

 

[city41]

I'm tempted to fix this A cuz it bugs me. All other letters in the game are 16 pixels tall.



And this X is kinda loopy too



I've also always wanted to add some spacing between rows of text in this game. It's always bugged me there is none



And maybe even fix up the grammar and spelling errors. But to be sure, I doubt I'll do any of these things. The goal of this hack is just team edit. Maybe I'll do a follow on "kof94 cleanup" hack some day.

 

[Neo Alec]

Yeah, leave some of that original "charm" intact and save the add-ons for a separate release for those who want it.

 

[Hattori Hanzo]

I'm with him, it's part of the fun.

 

[city41]

One request I've gotten is to make one random select be team select (ie you randomly get one of the 8 teams) and the other random characters ala kof98.

I like this idea as it would make versus mode more interesting. I also like it gives a reason for having two I only put two because I struggled to find a way to put up one that kept the screen balanced.

 

[SieKensou]

I'm tempted to fix this A cuz it bugs me. All other letters in the game are 16 pixels tall.

View attachment 73776

And this X is kinda loopy too

View attachment 73777

I've also always wanted to add some spacing between rows of text in this game. It's always bugged me there is none

View attachment 73778

And maybe even fix up the grammar and spelling errors. But to be sure, I doubt I'll do any of these things. The goal of this hack is just team edit. Maybe I'll do a follow on "kof94 cleanup" hack some day.

I think that fixes like all that don't hurt and I will go with that version, if I want to play the original I already have it, so as many fixes as we can have are welcome.

One request I've gotten is to make one random select be team select (ie you randomly get one of the 8 teams) and the other random characters ala kof98.

I like this idea as it would make versus mode more interesting. I also like it gives a reason for having two I only put two because I struggled to find a way to put up one that kept the screen balanced.

Yeah, KOF 2002 have that option. Random in that game is pressing START and if you press any direction while the random it changes to team random. Is a good option, yes.



After some BUG testing, this is what my friend and I got:

- I was testing last version 9.0, well still not testing because I left it playing the demos while I was doing other things and after some demos it gets stuck at the character select screen without any posibillity of doing nothing. I tried again (and again) and yes, it gets stuck afther the 4th demo, it seems it keeps there in an infinite bucle or something...

-Why the random incons are always the second colors?

-A new bug after finishing the character select screen and going to the order select screen. For some reason, some letters of the character name doesn't delete and are there during the order select screen. Well, it only happens with CHARACTER ROULETTE. The last letters TTE doesn't delete from the screen.

-If I select one or two characters and the I go through the TEAM ROULETTE the already selected characters change... In KOF2002 you can't use TEAM ROULETTE mode if it's not the first character. If you finally add the option of TEAM EDIT yes or no, this would be what decide how the RANDOM slots works instead of having both at the same time.

-If I'm using TEAM ROULETTE, the team doesn't change between battles.

 

[city41]

- I was testing last version 9.0, well still not testing because I left it playing the demos while I was doing other things and after some demos it gets stuck at the character select screen without any posibillity of doing nothing. I tried again (and again) and yes, it gets stuck afther the 4th demo, it seems it keeps there in an infinite bucle or something...

Ah nice find! The demo mode was using a part of the hack and I didn't realize it. This is now fixed in 0.9.1

-Why the random incons are always the second colors?

This is a bug: https://github.com/city41/kof94te/issues/66

I'll eventually fix it, but since it's so minor I'm not worrying about it for now.

-If I select one or two characters and the I go through the TEAM ROULETTE the already selected characters change... In KOF2002 you can't use TEAM ROULETTE mode if it's not the first character. If you finally add the option of TEAM EDIT yes or no, this would be what decide how the RANDOM slots works instead of having both at the same time.

I'm ok with this. Once the player knows that is how team roulette works, they will be good. Rugal does the same thing.

I decided I won't be adding the team edit yes/no question.

-If I'm using TEAM ROULETTE, the team doesn't change between battles.

Hmmm, I can't repro this. One thing about roulette is sometimes it picks the same team/character multiple times in a row. You can see this when your cursor is on a roulette space. If you watch, it will appear to "stall" sometimes, that is because it picked the same character (or team) again, sometimes 3 times in a row.

Is it possible you randomly got the same team twice?

The last letters TTE doesn't delete from the screen.

Oh yeah, fixed this too. This was just a minor goof on my part. Thanks.

 

[SieKensou]

Hmmm, I can't repro this. One thing about roulette is sometimes it picks the same team/character multiple times in a row. You can see this when your cursor is on a roulette space. If you watch, it will appear to "stall" sometimes, that is because it picked the same character (or team) again, sometimes 3 times in a row.

Is it possible you randomly got the same team twice?

You are right. It does it so fast and it selected the same team so I thought it didn't change. My mistake, sorry.

 

[city41]

You are right. It does it so fast and it selected the same team so I thought it didn't change. My mistake, sorry.

No worries. I was able to repro now too. And yeah, with only 8 teams the chances of picking the same team again is fairly high.

I'm ok with this. If I kept track of which teams were picked, since there are only 8 fights in single player mode, it becomes more of a "world tour" mode. I think just randomly seeing what you get is kinda fun too. Like getting a team you don't know very well twice in a row or your favorite team.